Sony Permanently Closing PS3, Vita, and PSP Stores This Summer

[Tsing]

Image: Sony



Sony will reportedly close its PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and PlayStation Portable stores in just a few months. The news was relayed by TheGamer, whose sources claim that all three shops will be shut down sometime in July. Sony is expected to make an announcement regarding their closure at the end of this month.



“The PS3, PS Vita, and PlayStation Portable stores aren’t long for this world,” the publication wrote. “According to a source familiar with the situation (verified by TheGamer), the stores are due to be closed down from July. The announcement is planned for the end of this month.”



“PSP’s and PS3’s stores are to be closed on July 2, while the PS Vita store will stay open until August 27. After those dates, you will no longer be able to purchase digital copies of...

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[Peter_Brosdahl]

The end of an era. Never got into the PSP but always thought the PS3 was amazing and I knew people who had the PS Vita. It was pretty cool for its time.

 

[Riccochet]

I still have a PS Vita. It's a good device.

 

[Burticus]

What Sony did to the PSP and Vita was basically parental negligence. They barely advertised the things and they were always treated like a 5th wheel.

I had a Vita for a while and it was a really cool device. I mean basically a Switch like 5 years beforehand. If they had bothered to advertise or even acknowledge it's existence it could have done well.

 

[DrezKill]

My friend sold me his launch-day PSP several years ago, and I soft-modded it, and it was a great portable system to carry around for years. Sadly that original version of the PSP had that blurry-@ss LCD screen with ghosting, and my particular unit has a bunch of dead pixels on it. I still want to get an OLED PS Vita and soft-mod that. At some point in the future I'll probably soft-mod the Switch as well.

I mean basically a Switch like 5 years beforehand.

Yupz. It is indeed a shame how Sony treated both of their portable systems.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

get an OLED PS Vita

I didn't realize they came with OLED back then. No wonder those screens looked so nice. I never really looked at the PSP but my friends showed off the Vitas and I admit they did look good.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

A bit off-topic but I got this for some portable OLED love a few months back. Games look amazing and well, pretty much everything does on it. I got poweramp for it and it's been able to stream hi-res audio at various 24-bit bitstreams(receiving device controls what is available).

Amazon.com

 

[DrezKill]

I didn't realize they came with OLED back then. No wonder those screens looked so nice.

Yeah only the original model (PCH-1000). The later revision (PCH-2000) switched to LCD screen, but this model also has 1GB of onboard flash memory, so you weren't required to use a memory card for storage. It was thinner, lighter, and supposedly had better battery life. I refuse to give up the OLED screen though.

 

[Stoly]

I loved my PSP, great portable console. I was like having a portable PS2
I used to play my PSX games on it, that was great.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

Yeah only the original model (PCH-1000). The later revision (PCH-2000) switched to LCD screen, but this model also has 1GB of onboard flash memory, so you weren't required to use a memory card for storage. It was thinner, lighter, and supposedly had better battery life. I refuse to give up the OLED screen though.

Sounds like typical Sony. I had the original PlayStation(pre PSOne) which had a better GPU and the extra port on the back. The PSOne downgraded the GPU but increased the CD ROM read speed while removing the rear port. We all know what happened with the PS3. The PS2 was one of the few that truly improved without compromise.

 

[Armenius]

You'll still be able to download content you own, yes? If they're still serving the content to people and licenses are still good, then I don't see why they need to take away the ability to purchase. If they don't want to maintain the console storefronts anymore then just direct people to the website to buy things.

 

[Grimlakin]

You'll still be able to download content you own, yes? If they're still serving the content to people and licenses are still good, then I don't see why they need to take away the ability to purchase. If they don't want to maintain the console storefronts anymore then just direct people to the website to buy things.

Just think about the costs they had to eat end of the year around updating old code and the potential for flash and everything else. If they had simply said the storefront is dead your licensed software can be obtained from x location have a nice day it would have been a non issue. Hence why they are doing it now. The cost of employee time and effort to update old code that nobody knows well any more (meaning the people that wrote it are gone or haven't touched it in a decade.) and few people are using makes it not worth the time to keep.

I don't KNOW that is how it went down... but I'd place bets.

 

[DrezKill]

The PSOne downgraded the GPU but increased the CD ROM read speed while removing the rear port.

I didn't know that sh1t about the GPU, or that PSOne had a faster drive. I had two pre-PSOne PlayStations. The first one I paid to get hard-modded, but that was dumb, because my system had the parallel I/O port on the back, which a Pro Action Replay could plug into, and give you the same full functionality you get from hard-mod (such as running burned discs and import games), but without having to open and permanently modify the system, and for a lot cheaper too. That PS1 eventually died on me (well the drive motor and the memory card reader died). Sony wanted too much money to fix my PS1, so I bought another (the last revision before the PSOne). That's the first one that didn't have the parallel I/O port anymore. So now I was ****ed. No mod-chip and no port for pro action replay. Oh well. Many years later I gave the broken PS1 to a friend who specializes in console repair and modding to do whatever he wanted with it (use it for spare parts, fix it, whatever), and I still have the other one (which I don't use anymore cuz first I used my PS2 Slim for PS1 games, then later used emulation on both PC and PS3 to run PS1 games, especially now that my PS2 no longer reads discs, and its memory card port is very unreliable).

You'll still be able to download content you own, yes?

That's my assumption, but so far I have yet to see confirmation of that. I doubt they would lock owners out of their content though. On other platforms like X360, I know I can still re-download games that aren't offered for sale anymore (like OutRun Online and Afterburner Climax).